What's it like to be a skateboard punk rocker?

Tonight I had the distinct pleasure of seeing the crazily amazing Michelle Shocked perform at the Landmark on Main Street. The last time I saw her perform she was talking about our new President, Bill Clinton, and sounded really excited. Tonight she was talking again about a new President and was equally, if not more, enthused. While she performed an ample amount of her back catalog, including "Anchorage," and "Come a Long Way," her new tunes were just as engaging, including one song which she wrote about America, in which she exclaimed that "we should see other people." She also called her boyfriend back in California during the show (while on stage) and put him on speaker phone, so he could hear her perform the song she wrote about him.
Keep on rockin' girl!

Fave Five

As of this date I have only seen approximately 10 of the movies released in 2008, I have therefore downgraded my Top Ten list for the year to a Top Five:

In Bruges

Rachel Getting Married

Slumdog Millionaire

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

WALL-E

Updike at Rest

If your definition of "favorite author" is the one you would most like to have dinner with, then my favorite author just died. Although having read only three of his novels (Bech:A Book, Bech is Back, and The Witches of Eastwick), and a smattering of his essays, I found him to be so unutterably charming and charismatic a presence, that I even went out of my way to see him once or twice at the 92nd Street Y, something I am not generally wont to do. The world is missing one more distinguished man of letters.

Freedom's Just Another Word

So they're closing Guantanamo Bay. Apparently. And on a wholly unrelated note, a friend of mine told me about a new show called something like Don't Forget the Lyrics. Well, just wrap up all the prizes and give them to me right now, as I never forget the lyrics. To anything. Ever. Except perhaps for Me and Bobby McGee, which I heard Kris Kristofferson sing last night on Elvis Costello's Spectacle, and when I tried to sing it myself later, couldn't remember the line after "Busted flat in Baton Rouge..."
Which would be the second line in.

Splenda in the Glass

I must confess I am completely addicted to Jones Diet Cherry Soda, mainly because of that not-so-secret ingredient, Splenda, apparently made from the best stuff on earth (no not that stuff), sugar, mixed with what, chlorine???

So Many Songs, such little time; or, More About Bob

For the past few days I've been binging on Dylan - I watched the DVDs of Todd Haynes' film I'm Not There, with 6 actors playing different aspects of Dylan (4 stars for the extras alone) and Pete Seeger: The Power of Song; am listening to Positively 4th Street (the book by David Hajdu, NOT the song), and ordered up some Dylanographies from Amazon. Here's a few more favorite songs, not previously mentioned:

• Tombstone Blues - "..the reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse.." (Richie Havens does an amazing cover of this in Haynes' movie)
• Things Have Changed - Great latterday Dylan
  
• Tangled Up in Blue - my favorite bit of Dylan trivia, supposedly this was written after Bob immersed himself in the Joni Mitchell classic, Blue
• Love Minus Zero/No Limit - ..."there's no success like failure.." Huh? Nevertheless, one of his best love songs, IMHO
• Everything is Broken - like me, Bob loves his lists!
  
• I'll Keep it With Mine
• Knockin' on Heaven's Door - Yet another song by Bob that sounds like it was written during the Civil War
• Man Gave Names to All the Animals - love the humor of this one
  
• Subterranean Homesick Blues - a "verbal whirlwind" of urban paranoia
  
• Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I'll Go Mine)

And some not so favorites:

• Just like a woman - this song reminds me of a friend from High School, who absolutely loved this song, in fact I think she thought it was about her. It wasn't.
• Lay, Lady, Lay - I guess I'm not a romantic, what can I say?
  

The Best Movie I've Seen This Year!

Of course it is only January 5th, but I am confident that Slumdog Millionaire (2008), is deserving of any top prize at whatever festival is going. Part docudrama about living in the slums of India, part Bollywood girl-meets-boy fantasy, it works on both levels. It's an emotional rollercoaster and hugely entertaining to boot.

Sontagonism

Susan Sontag was a writer of depth and intelligence who I admired, but failed to understand. Her early journals which have recently been published, edited by her son, David Rieff, are fascinating, if still a bit cryptic. Some of the easier-to-understand samples:
"There is often a contradiction between the meaning of our actions toward a person and what we say we feel toward that person in a journal. But this does not mean that what we do is shallow and only what we confess to ourselves is deep."
"I hardly think except when I'm talking. That's why I talk so much."
"Inspiration presents itself to me in the form of anxiety."
"Some years ago I realized that reading made me sick, that I was like an alcoholic who nevertheless experiences a bad hangover after each binge."
Above is an old picture of me with Sontag at a reading she gave in 1986. Inserting myself Zelig-like into every photo opportunity!